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If content can be social, advertising can be too: this is the premise on which BuzzFeed’s revenue model is based. BuzzFeed makes 100 percent of its revenue from sponsored content, which Chief Revenue Officer Andy Wiedlin described at WAN-IFRA's Digital Media Europe 2013 as a more effective way for advertisers to connect with audiences, compared with traditional display ads.

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Social sharing is an increasingly powerful force. “People share things that make them look clever and cool. They are building their own personal brands,” Wiedlin said. That’s why they come to BuzzFeed: to find this content, and this is something that advertisers should try to take advantage of.

Banner ads are disruptive and can’t be shared: subsequently they are ignored and hated, Wiedlin said. “If you’re an advertiser, stop interrupting people and create content that they actually like,” he advised. “For the first time you can do word-of-mouth marketing.”

Social ads have much higher engagement: BuzzFeed’s sponsored content has a 2 to 3 per cent click through rate, Wiedlin said. And the fact that this ad content can be shared, and often is, means that advertisers often end up getting more exposure than they pay for.

To be successful, however, the content must be engaging. Social ads should tell a story, involve people emotionally and not be heavy handed, Wiedlin advised: treat it like a TV ad.

He urged people to think “Does this content pass the Facebook test?” In other words, would you want to see it in your Facebook feed? If the answer is no, then don’t do it.

BuzzFeed creates content for its advertising clients: it has a creative team that works separately from its editorial team. Many clients come prepared with ideas, but often these need to be changed as brands are used to talking at people, rather than getting them to engage and share, Wiedlin said.

Advertising revenues at Sweden’s top tabloid were split 56% digital and 44% print for 2012. Overall, the paper reported a profit of €36.8million (SEK 312m), an announcement said. This is a small increase on 2011, when digital advertising was higher than print for seven months out of the year.

“It is historic and it is what makes Aftonbladet the market leader among Swedish newspapers and the leading publication through the structural transformation from analogue to digital,” said Helin.

Online ad revenue at the paper increased by 18%. The fastest growth was in mobile, where ad revenue was €8.8million (SEK 75m), three times as much as in 2011. Helin has previously said that he expects mobile to be the most-accessed form of Aftonbladet by 2014.

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How to restructure newsroom operations and create sustainable business models for the digital age are priorities for newsrooms around the world. In advance of a webinar on Wednesday, 16 January, media analyst Ken Doctor offered some advice to newsrooms facing multiple challenges on what to areas to invest in and focus on, and how to make readers pay for your content.

WAN-IFRA: There used to a rough formula/rule-of-thumb (at least for many US newsrooms), that you had one journalist for every 1,000 copies of circulation. Do you think there’s a new formula? Or are things changing too fast to be able to calculate an equivalent today?

Doctor: Just as the old business model has broken down, so has the newsroom math that used to accompany it. Smarter companies actually have increased the percentage of their overall spending in the two areas that matter most for the future: news content-creating capacity and advertising sales. The last five years have seen unparalleled cost-cutting, beginning with the great frightsizing of 2008-2009. So we’ve seen cuts across the boards and while we’ve seen some appropriate Big Iron - presses, pre-production and trucking - cuts, newsrooms have lost much capacity.

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Looking through lists of cute cat pictures, or 49 Things That Taste Like Christmas, and tags that include “LOL” or “trashy” or “wtf”, it would be easy to dismiss BuzzFeed as beneath the attention of serious editors and journalists.

But listening to the site’s editorial director, Scott Lamb, speaking in Paris at Sciences Po university’s New Practices in Journalism conference last week, it became evident that there is more to the site than first meets the eye, and that it can offer lessons that could be useful for publishers of all journalistic products.

Lamb was clear that BuzzFeed doesn’t aim to simply provide mindless entertainment. “We think of ourselves as a news organisation,” he said. “We are not going to be able to compete with The Wall Street Journal, but we can cover things that other people don’t.” It is this sentiment that led to the hiring of Ben Smith, a well-regarded political journalist who had been at Politico, as editor-in-chief in December 2011.

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Flash quiz: what is the highest-circulation English-language newspaper in the world?

(Hint: Rupert Murdoch doesn’t own it.)

The correct answer, as you are likely aware, is the Times of India, which has a circulation of 4.3 million, and reaches an average of 7.64 million readers with each issue.

While money may not exactly be growing on trees in the news industry these days, the 174-year-old title, published by family-owned media conglomerate Bennett, Coleman & Company (B.C.C.L.), is planted in fertile soil: it is the most widely read English-language daily in a country where newspaper circulation is rising by 8 percent per year overall, and 1.5 percent per year for English-language newspapers.

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It seems the corruption of the news media in China extends not only to suppressing negative content, but also to planting positive content as well. According to The New York Times, various Chinese print and television media organizations regularly profile executives or otherwise feature companies in exchange for thousands of dollars in bribes.

Although such practices are technically illegal in China, the transactions are so rampant that many public relations firms and advertising agencies openly admitted to paying for coverage, the article said.

The Bejing office of Ogilvy and Mather, for example, told The New York Times in an email, “Our policy is to advise our clients to not participate in such activities. However, in some industries, such as luxury, the practice of soft news placements is very common so this is something that we have also done before.”

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The Huffington Post UK has launched a new 'Inspiration' section on its site which will enable brands "to communicate directly with prospective consumers via video, blogs and social media," announced a press release from AOL.

Its first focus is a cross-platform package in conjunction with other AOL properties to promote Iceland as a year-round tourist destination. As the press release says, the 'Inspired by Iceland' campaign, sponsored by Promote Iceland and Iceland's government, is "the first Europe- wide marketing campaign that fully integrates a comprehensive suite of AOL advertising products, content and platforms."

There are other posts on the page that are unrelated to the Iceland effort, and HuffPost UK editor-in-chief Carla Buzasi said that the Inspiration section is dedicated to "all things inspirational." Food will be a theme over the next few days, then careers and lifestyle, with participation from both HuffPo's journalists and bloggers.

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Since October of this year, The Guardian has been nursing a fledgling online project in private beta testing; now that project is ready to be unveiled to the world at large.

The Guardian's community notice board, logically called n0tice, has now entered public beta testing and is available for the public to use. The service has been billed by many as the paper's attempt to branch into hyperlocal media; the notice board was described by GigaOm as "part blogging platform, part Craigslist, part communal Twitter stream, part forum, part event listing", yet it still manages to be something akin to the traditional community notice board.

The idea is that users join the network and create their own message boards, the appearance of which can be customized according to the user's preference. The user can then post details of upcoming events, share news and advertise things for sale. n0tice is structured by locality, so those users in a similar area will be able to see the content of all the message boards close to them. In this way, the service operates as a sort of Everyblock-style information sharing operation, with a bit of Craigslist-style hawking on the side.

Editors Weblog

The World Editors Forum is the organization within the World Association of Newspapers devoted to newspaper editors worldwide. The Editors Weblog (www.editorsweblog.org), launched in January 2004, is a WEF initiative designed to facilitate the diffusion of information relevant to newspapers and their editors.